An Honest Conversation About Abortion That Asks Us Not to Turn Away — From Anyone
So maybe as a community, we just keep being Pro-Voice —- to listen and hear all the stories around abortion?
Realizing that our voice about women's abortions — lacks authenticity unless we speak of male promiscuity.
How male promiscuity is about power and pleasure and no presence.
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How male promiscuity is about sensuality and fertility and no responsibility.
How male promiscuity is about cultural instability.
Raising our voices about how when the Church is all about all the best looking good, instead of all the broken living grace, some of us women don't think we can take the shame. Some of us take an appointment.
Using our voices to ask: Why does the Church shame a woman for getting pregnant, shame her for aborting that baby —- yet what about realizing that it can be this shame for sin, that actually bullies into further sin, and what if instead of shaming — we weren't ashamed of the Gospel of extravagant Grace?
The abortion debate offers that a woman is ultimately responsible alone for her child; the Gospel offers that no woman is ever alone and the Body of Christ is response-able to both woman and child.
The abortion debate is not so much about how we can somehow change the law, but how we can rise up and change how we show Gospel love.
To have any credibility in lobbying for laws against the abortion of babies, we must have the dependability of being the ones who open our doors for the welcoming of both hurting women and vulnerable children.
If the compassion of the world is "We do not want unwanted human beings born into the world" —- then the compassion of the Gospel has to be far more powerful.
The compassion of Christ-followers needs to literally and practically and sacrificially be: "We will not rest until all humans beings get to be born, because they are wanted."
We will not rest until every single person in the Church is stirred en masse to personally support one woman in need, one child in need, one family in need. Be it as a family for a woman who needs a safety net, or becoming a support for a fostering family, or becoming an adoptive family for a child.
We will not rest until there's a pro-Human health centre in every single neighborhood, until we have not only talked about and modelled what it means not to confuse love and sex, what flourishing relationships really are, what healthy abstinence, sex education and birth control look like — and what making love really is, in the fullest sense of the word, so people don't end up making babies they aren't fully ready for.
We will not rest until we've all put our heads and our hands together to offer affordable, subsidized childcare, free preschools, no-cost or low-cost women's full service health clinics.
We will not rest until we realize that it's us who have to make ethical choices about our lives — from how we support viable minimum wages to where we buy our clothes and our food and our entertainment — if we are ever to ask women and men in unexpected places to make ethical choices about human life —- because it's each of our unethical choices that effects the economy and the environment and the culture negatively — so that a woman feels like she can't make an ethical choice.
We will not rest until we take the step after Facebook status updates — and get down on our knees and serve women who feel like they have no choice. Being Pro-Human will mean pro-human employers and educators who are pro-pregnancy, adapting jobs environments, offering paid maternity leaves, adapting educational options, offering real help and not leaving anyone in need.
Because being Pro-Human will mean that we will have to give up some of our choices — to show women that they have any choice at all.
Envisioning a world without abortions, means you have to envision a world in which you sacrifice so that women's health needs are better met, so her future shines with brighter possibilities, so her dreams grow with wider and deeper hope.
Because being Pro-Human means putting our Gospel where our mouth and hands are — or, dare we say — stop bellyaching about how things are.
Because the call of the Church is never to stir up judgement, but to stir up love, stir up courage, stir up change.
And we will not rest from this way, though none of this will be breaking news, and it will mean we will have to break our plans, break our stereotypes, break our comfort zones, break our timelines, break our banks, to be broken and given and we will get to live The Emmaus Option. Maybe if we all lived The Emmaus Option — women would feel like they had real options.
* * *
And that boy of ours, that human being who was just beginning in me when the doctor asked me that question, asked me if I had thought about an abortion —- well, that boy messaged me this week, just a few weeks away from beginning his own third year of university.
"What would it take to enact true change?" he asks me after he's watched the 5th video with its fingers and toes of a real little human, someone's boy, sold as line items to offer tremendous "diversification a revenue stream."
What does it say of our humanity when we place value on aborted human organs — but not on the human baby who had those organs?
We sit with that, how we failed woman and child.Every abortion is a failure of humanity: failing a human being in crisis and a human being in utero.
I get word — and exhale:
Preemptive Love has stood days beside Alima. Listened to her fears and her worries, gave her voice — and offered to give her everything she needs. Including their unwavering hand. They live the Gospel, they pull skin up on to His compassion.
And Alima isn't faced with an impossible choice — but she faces an unspeakable gift — of a new child.
Something in me breaks open, spills. And I tell our boy: Change won't be enacted until we all act differently — and we will not rest until there is change.
And outrage alone over abortions will never stop abortions; what always starts lasting change is outreach. Our humble outrage must grow into helpful, holy outreach — if we are ever going to help all humans grow and flourish.
And we will not rest because of the Alimas and the boys with dreams, because "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil … Not to speak is to speak. Not to act, is to act." [Bonhoeffer]
A painting of one of Alima's people hangs on our wall — a little girl. I can't turn away from the girl's eyes, can't turn away from the bunny rabbit brushed into the corner of the canvas, the voiceless dreams of a child — and the dreams of a mother for her child.
It's strange how that is:
How when we don't turn away — everything finally begins to turn.
This article was originally published at aholyexperience.com.
